An independent record of the VW Bulli: the van, the campers, the shows, and the name.
The Bulli Show is an independent reference page about one of the most durable nicknames in motoring: 'Bulli', the German pet name for the Volkswagen Transporter. It documents the van's history from Ben Pon's 1947 sketch to the electric ID. Buzz, the camper culture that grew around it, and what public records actually show for the name 'thebullishow'. Nothing here is for sale.
Bulli is the everyday German name for the Volkswagen Type 2, the van line that began production in Wolfsburg in March 1950 as the company's second model after the Beetle (Type 1). The most widely cited explanation treats the word as a blend of 'Bus' and 'Lieferwagen', the German term for a delivery van, covering the two body styles in which the vehicle was first offered.
A frequently retold story says Volkswagen's management wanted 'Bulli' as the official badge but ran into an existing trademark — the Lanz Bulldog tractor — and settled on 'Transporter' instead. The details of that episode are hard to verify and sources differ, but the outcome is documented fact: the official name was Transporter, while Bulli survived as the affectionate name used by owners, clubs and the press.
The first three generations kept the original layout: an air-cooled boxer engine in the back and the driver sitting above the front axle. The T1 (1950–1967) is the split-windscreen 'Splittie'; the T2 (1967–1979) introduced the single curved 'bay window'; the T3 (1979–1992) grew wider and squarer and switched to water-cooled engines in its later years.
The T4 (1990–2003) moved the engine to the front, a fundamental break with the 1950 concept. The T5 (2003–2015) and T6 (2015, facelifted as T6.1 in 2019) refined that formula. Since 2021 the passenger version has been sold as the T7 Multivan on Volkswagen's MQB platform, while the commercial Transporter line continues separately.
The camper branch is almost as old as the van itself. From 1951 the Westfalia company converted Type 2 buses into campers — early examples are known by their 'SO' option codes — adding pop-up roofs, folding beds and compact kitchens. These conversions helped turn the Bulli from a delivery vehicle into a symbol of independent travel.
The California name appeared in 1988 on a Westfalia-built T3. After the Westfalia partnership ended, Volkswagen brought camper production in-house at its Hannover plant in 2004 with the T5 California, and the range later widened to the Crafter-based Grand California and the compact Caddy California.
In German-speaking Europe a 'Bulli show' (Bullitreffen) is typically a weekend gathering where owners display their vans, trade parts and camp on site. Larger events draw hundreds of vehicles across all generations, from restored T1 'Samba' buses with their many windows to rat-look survivors kept deliberately unrestored.
The format is informal by design: there is rarely a single organiser's stage programme, and much of the value lies in the parts market and in technical exchange between owners. Shows like these are the main reason the nickname stays in active use more than seventy years after it was coined.
For the domain thebullishow.com itself, the public record is thin: the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine holds no meaningful snapshots, so whatever content once existed at this address is not documented there.
Search results associate the exact name with two unrelated things. One is an old free website built with the Yola site builder, headed 'The Bulli Show' and hosting an mp3 file titled 'Black And White Rag'. The other is a set of social media profiles — Instagram and Facebook — for a Volkswagen bus dealership in Reutte, Tyrol, Austria, which describes itself as Europe's largest VW bus centre with a 1,700 m² showroom. This reference site is connected to neither.
In March 2022 Volkswagen presented the ID. Buzz, an electric van on the MEB platform whose styling deliberately quotes the T1: short overhangs, a large round badge, optional two-tone paint. A panel version, the ID. Buzz Cargo, followed the passenger model.
The ID. Buzz matters to this reference for one reason: it shows the Bulli idea outliving the mechanical layout that created it. The engine moved from the back to the front and then into the floor as a battery, yet the silhouette — and the nickname — remained recognisable.